Pursuit of Speed – OnePlus 6T McLaren Edition

Salute to speed – One Plus 6T McLaren Edition

It’s with the OnePlus 6 that the company started to turn their devices into glass slabs and unconditionally embrace the notch. With glass on both sides, the OnePlus 6T McLaren edition that we are reviewing packs a sharper, saturated and vibrant Super AMOLED display with Corning Gorilla glass at the front and a subtle Carbon Fiber shimmer beneath the glass at the back of the phone, and not to forget those slight “Papaya Orange” accents oozing over the edges at the back.

When it comes to performance OnePlus has never been a sloth. And this time they’ve collaborated with McLaren, by blending McLaren’s design philosophy in the device which can be seen throughout the UI and UX.

Build Quality and Performance on the OnePlus 6T McLaren edition

Beneath the shell, it is the same Oneplus 6T with the fast flagship Snapdragon 845 coupled with a whopping 10GB of RAM and massive 256GB of internal storage. Throw any app, shoot 4k or load the most graphics intensive game, the OnePlus 6T McLaren edition can take all of them simultaneously with ease, all thanks to the most optimized Android skin “Oxygen OS”. This phone glides through everyday tasks without any hiccups. With an added array of tweaks, this device performs better than ever. But 10GB of RAM doesn’t seem to benefit OxygenOS much, either. Performance is as fast and responsive as on a regular 6T with 8GB of RAM as far as I could tell. And I don’t mean that this abundant RAM is useless, it doesn’t make any difference as of now, but eventually, over the years this is going to be good. The Oxygen OS optimizations certainly enhance the experience in the device. It’s the smoothest, responsive and most fluid android device I ever used till date.

To achieve a better screen to body ratio the earpiece has been pushed to the edge of the screen along with teardrop notch at the top. Bezels have been slimmed down to a greater extent than it’s rivals, but at a cost of the headphone jack. Yes! The same company which used to boast about embracing headphone jack a year ago has now turned back and removed it.

Faster dash charging on the OnePlus 6T McLaren edition

The bright orange braided charging cable is strong and turns a lot of heads when used in the office. Justifying their tagline “Salute to Speed”, they’ve included a 30W power brick in the box, which can refuel your device to up to 50 per cent in just 20 minutes. With moderate to intensive use with very little gaming and day-to-day tasks, you can easily get close to seven hours of Screen-On-Time, which is impressive.

And then, there’s the inevitable chink in the armour, the in-display-fingerprint sensor. It is a pretty useful feature and frees up real estate in the front while ensuring that the fingerprint sensor isn’t out of your sight. There is one problem though in the OnePlus 6T McLaren edition. The in-display-fingerprint sensor doesn’t always detect your fingerprint on the first try and even when it does it takes longer to do so. However, it ceases to be such a problem considering the fact that face recognition can also be used to unlock the phone.

Shoot away!

OnePlus has come a long way in terms of the camera since the brand was introduced. With software being its core, image processing is incredible! This camera has been my go-to for day to day photography and for all my social media needs during my travel and work. The stock algorithms perform great with minimal artificial sharpening and images look great to the eyes with punchier colours. Yes, it’s unfair to compare it to the other flagships, but certainly, it is the best in its class and not too far off the other flagships. With add-ons like Portrait mode, Night sight, Pro mode, and shooting RAW images this camera has been a reliable, consistent all-around performer in daylight.

With top of the line hardware, premium build quality, solid performance, and a good camera OnePlus 6T McLaren edition is a great buy for anyone looking for a flagship with off-the-charts performance.